Adventure Magazine Cover, October 1911 — page 80: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

1026 “T can’t believe it!” cried the girl. ““What about food? Why, we will starve!” “No trouble about thet, miss,’ put in Healy. ‘‘We’re pervisioned fer a year at least. ’N’ as fer coal, we c’ud keep the heat goin’ fer as long as thet and then hev’ enough to git back to Reykjavik under a quarter head o’ steam.” “Ves,” said Berwind, “we shall live through the imprisonment, for that matter.” ‘The point is,” said Stuart, “that we just plain have to!” She looked at them each in turn. or three months!” she said. They nodded, like a row of mandarins, Stuart without looking at her but intent upon the whitened sea, Berwind with a grave cheerfulness, her father nervously and with much disgust, and Captain Con Healy with the unsurpassable melancholy that was his. She drew a deep breath and was silent for a moment. Then with an encouraging pressure of the arm in hers, she said, smiling, ‘““At that rate, the sooner we get down to breakfast, the better, don’t you think so?” “Well said!” cried Berwind, his face il- luminated. ‘‘ You are a trump card, Miss Nora. I am proud to know you!” Even Healy smiled at her. But Stuart turned suddenly and walked back toward the snow-house, as if to gather up their few belongings. When he returned, as Berwind and Healy were securing the life-rope to Mr. Lee and Nora, she noticed that he was again wearing the fur coat that she had slept under all night without knowing it. She noticed also that his eyes regarded her with the look of a man who is supremely puzzled. @) Damozel had put off and was nearing the shore of the fiord a mile farther down just below the fissure. ‘‘They’ve been wondering what became of us, I reck- on,” said Healy with a sad satisfaction. As they set forward, the hard snow taking no impression of their footsteps, Berwind and Stuart fell in together, Mr. Lee and his daughter following, while Captain Healy led the well-known way. ‘“At least you can’t complain of this place, Berwind,” said his companion, “‘that noth- ing ever happens init! Imay say that a day at Coney Island with a lunatic would be peacefully barren of incident compared to the life we are leading here.” ‘‘And then the incident of finding no “Two ALREADY the boat from the Blessed Adventure treasure cave!” retorted Berwind mockingly. ““There’s a thrill for you! Why, my dear fellow, all we have to do is to start out every day in another direction looking for pirates’ Caves, to experience it again.”’ “TI believe you have caught melancholy from the Captain,” returned Stuart. Berwind eyed him. ‘That is not half so likely as that you have caught your death of a cold, going without your coat all night.” “Tt wasn’t bad fun walking about watch- ing the fog lift,” said Stuart. “I can sleep any old time, but it is not more than once in a life-time that one can see an army of ice- bergs saunter into one’s front yard.” He spoke lightly, but the reference to his night’s experience brought his brows together in the puzzled frown again. The problem that so perplexed him was Nora Lee herself. How could so many contradictory qualities find themselves all together in one girl? How could the girl who could face the three months’ imprisonment on the Vatna more bravely than they themselves nurse so base- less an anger against him? _ “Took here, Stuart,” said Berwind grave- ly. They had but just reached the first cuts of the fissure, and the Doctor had bent down almost on one knee in the snow. He gathered something in his hand and held it up. It was a little bunch of the wild oats they had noticed on their way up the day before, flourishing in a pathetic insistence, wiry and dry, in the crevices of the rock. It was now absolutely withered and black. Nora and Mr. Lee came up at the mo- ment and stopped beside them. ‘‘Is this where we go down, Mr. Stuart?” he asked. ‘‘Berwind, what have you there?” “Another evidence of the curse of the Abbot,” said the Doctor, rising and laying the blackened wisps of straw in Nora’s hand. ‘“‘What is that line about the grass being thrown into the oven? What is an oven in comparison to the curse of a right- eous man, eh?” “Very largely assisted by a natural phenomenon in the shape of a drifting ice- pack,”’ put in Stuart, as he took a step or two away toward the waiting Captain. But Mr. Lee, bending over his daugher’s open palm, ignored this latter and most sensible remark. He lifted a face that was as white as a bit of linen. “Yesterday it was alive,” he said slowly. “We saw it growing here—it was alive.” He took some of the withered bits from his CO MICLOOKS CO